Vital Information
by Angela Townsend
There are people who love to tell you the bad news. Forty-nine percent of them work for the weather service. They steeple their fingers in an underground lair. Rivulets of drool race down their chins at the first clap of thunder. If they see a cloud the size of a man’s hand, they inform you that tornadoes will leap out of the dark and grab you by the rump. The eschaton is imminent.
Mommy’s Business
by Bob Johnson
Her mother was in danger of “crashing,” the doctor told Kat, if she didn’t haul herself out of bed and do her rehab. The old lady had broken a hip a month earlier, and her urinary tract infections—though they responded well enough to antibiotics—returned like clockwork the instant the meds stopped.
Leaving Kit Lacy
by David Summerfield
It was Sunday morning, when I got up, I could feel something heavy like a cop’s boot on my neck. Putting on my pants and shirt, I tied my shoes and went out into the parking lot. A rogue storm had left the sky dark and a wet film over everything. I sucked in a deep breath, heaved it back out, the air stale from all the wet trash. I stood listening to empty silence until city workers drifted in and started to clean it up. It wouldn’t be so bad when they got all this trash up, I thought, and I went to the motel lobby to get some coffee. I saw Joe and Les come through the neon haze looking like two apparitions. They came into the lobby, dropped their bags, and poured out some coffee.
The Sickness That Healed Me
by Rola Elnaggar
I was three years old, white as a sheet, heart racing in my ears and hiding between two twin beds, all alone in the apartment with the only source of light coming from the mute TV, when the front door creaked open, and two pairs of footsteps pattered against the carpet—instilling more fear into my frail toddler heart—and stepped into my childhood room. It was my grandma and my uncle. I was relieved it was them and not a stranger coming to kidnap me, but it was so short-lived because the clock was ticking on my days as an only child.
Wheels In the Age of Stones
by Sarp Sozdinler
As a kid, my father warned me that if I turned on the dome lights while he drove, he would turn blind. Despite the urge, I was afraid of making him run the car off the cliff and have us all killed. Over the years, I dreamed of more convenient scenarios where he would only get himself killed and the rest of us injured, or vice versa, so either the cops or an undertaker would have to take him away from us. From me. Dead or alive.
Maria, Sophia, or Anna
by Addison Zeller
We called her Maria, Sophia, or Anna, but I don’t think she was Anna because I’d remember having two sisters with that name. For a few years my mother insisted we call her our sister, my sister and me. Your sister in India, she said, slipping a photo out of an envelope. She looks like this. She waved the photo in front of us and fastened it to the door of our refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cow.
Pesto
by Selen Ozturk
I’m mashing garlic, lemon, pine nuts, salt, pepper, parmesan, olive oil and basil because my husband is going toothless and this is something he can eat, earthy paste. And the backyard is a cramped lot tufted here and there with basil, and weeds in the years since he stopped remembering to water. My husband is not only losing his teeth but his memory, but he can gum at pesto.
Sleepyhead
by Adeola Adeniyi
We finally made love last Thursday three days after her seventeenth birthday and then the following Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday. She had some pretty good moves, but she wasn’t a whore. No doubt our lovemaking was why Roxanne felt cool with calling my house from a police precinct out in Coney Island and begging for me to come pick her up. I can’t act like she didn’t have a few problems in her life, but her calling from a precinct still surprised me. My gut just told me Fernando Riveria was responsible for her trouble. I still asked Roxanne why they arrested her and she swore a cop only accused her of attempting to draw on a train car because he saw her sketching in a notebook with a magic marker. I sucked my teeth but agreed to help Roxy because I loved her. She loved me. I knew I’d remember Foxy Roxy, her black hair past her back, and that Pangaea-sized ass of hers for the rest of my life. Even in old age when I forgot everything else, I’d still remember that butt. She thanked me for being the coolest big brother ever and I hung up, brushed my fade, and drove to the precinct.